The Seventh Apprentice by Joseph Delaney Read Free Book Online Page A

at a signal from the witch, I found out what it was.
    She clapped her hands three times.
    At the first clap, the creature began to climb up her skirt. By the second, it was perching on her shoulder. No sooner had the echo of the third clap died away than it went into action, leaping from the witch’s shoulder straight onto the belly of the sow—the smallest of the dead pigs—clinging there with its sharp finger- and toenails.
    It was ferocious and very fast. Teeth gleaming in the moonlight, it began to eat ravenously. I couldn’t believe the speed with which it guzzled the raw flesh. It gnawed its way right into the belly and disappeared. I could hear it biting and tearing from within, making the carcass slowly spin back and forth on its creaking chains.
    I watched in astonishment as the creature emerged, having eaten its fill of the pig’s insides, and clambered up onto the sow’s back, giving me my first clear view of it in the moonlight.
    It had a narrow face and teeth, and I saw that its nose was a triangle of sharp bone, which it used to cut and tear at the dead flesh it feasted upon. It had whiskers too, very long and thick, more like bristles than hair. Then I noticed that it had no eyes, just a hard plate of bone that served as a forehead.
    As I watched, pink froth started to bubble from its mouth, and within seconds its whole face was obscured. Soon I realized the purpose of this.
    It had by now eaten enough flesh to lay bare the white ridged spine of the sow; raw flesh and gristle still clung to it. The froth from the creature’s mouth soon covered the bone, and then the creature began to lick it off. When the spine reappeared, it was absolutely clean.
    The creature proceeded to devour the whole pig in less than ten minutes, it seemed, and then it returned to the witch, grasping her skirt. All that remained of the pig was a skeleton gleaming in the moonlight.
    But the creature’s gluttony had changed it. The hairy limbs were still very thin, but now its belly was so bloated that it hung down and trailed on the ground. It waddled awkwardly as the witch led it away.
    Peter had stayed fast asleep throughout the whole terrible scene, so I was the only one who heard the witch’s threatening words:
    “Tomorrow I’ll hang you both up and slit your throats,” she hissed, her voice dripping with venom. “After that I’ll cut away your thumbs and then feed you to my little pet. Enjoy your last night on earth.”

CHAPTER VIII
T HUMB B ONES
    A FTER the witch had left the pen, I kept still for a long time, hardly daring to breathe lest the sound drew attention to me. I feared that she might change her mind and come back early to slaughter me.
    Then I started thinking over what she’d said: “I’ll cut away your thumbs and then feed you to my little pet.”
    My master had told me that some witches cut off the thumbs of those they killed. Then they boiled them in a cauldron until the flesh fell off from the bones. Magic could be stored in those bones.
    But I didn’t have thumbs anymore, did I? I had trotters.
    My mind seemed sharper now, and words that had been beyond my grasp now tumbled into my head and waited eagerly for me to use them.
    Illusion! That was an important word.
    I remembered my earlier thoughts on how all our senses combined and reinforced one another. But if we were being deceived, one sense might just point to the truth. I had recognized the witch for what she was because she stank of pig. No doubt the nectar I’d drunk had altered my senses in some way. Maybe now, at last, they were returning to normal—which was why I could no longer bear the smell of the manure. Peter didn’t seem to have undergone a similar change. As I watched, he opened his eyes and trotted over to the pig muck again. He began rooting inside it with his snout, found something interesting, and gulped it down.
    A seventh son of a seventh son had some resistance to the spells of a witch. Maybe that was why my mind, at